MONTREAL -- Goaltending is an area of the Penguins' prospect pool that actually has some depth.
There's Joel Blomqvist, who is coming off of an exceptional season in Finland. They have Filip Lindberg, who joined Wilkes-Barre after a successful college career, and suffered a season-ending injury in November of his rookie AHL season last year. Taylor Gauthier was signed out of the WHL this spring after turning heads in his over-age season.
With the Penguins' first selection of Day 2 of Friday's NHL draft in Montreal, they opted to bolster that goaltending pool even further.
The Penguins selected Russian goaltender Sergei Murashov with their fourth-round pick, No. 118 overall.
The league's central scouting department ranked the 6-foot, 170-pound Murashov the seventh-best goaltender available in the draft. He catches with a right hand, a rarity in today's game.
Murashov spent the entirety of last season with Yaroslavl in the MHL, the junior affiliate of the Lokomotiv KHL team. He went 21-16-3 in 41 appearances, posting a 2.49 goals-against average and a .927 save percentage.
Penguins director of amateur scouting Nick Pryor said that the Penguins' Russian scout Alexander Khavanov and goaltending development coach Chuck Grant were both scouting Murashov and were "very high" on him.
"He's got good hockey sense for a goalie and good athletic ability," Pryor said of Murashov. "He's just someone that we were high on as a staff and we really liked the hockey sense and the calmness that he brings."
I asked Pryor yesterday if the Penguins would go into Day 2 of the draft looking to fill any specific positional need or if they would continue to simply draft the best player available, and he said that the Penguins would stick to picking the top player on their draft board, regardless of position, and that was the case here. He said Friday that the Penguins were "really happy" with their goaltending depth in the prospect pool coming into the draft, but when Murashov fell to them in the fourth round, they knew they had to take him.
There was some uncertainty coming into this draft on if Russian players would see their draft stock impacted by current world events. It's unclear if Russian players might face difficulties leaving Russia to come to the U.S. at this point. Murashov didn't come to the draft, and Pryor said he doesn't expect Murashov to be able to come to the Penguins' development camp next week. Pryor said that the uncertainties with Russian players definitely went into their thinking when making the pick, but they ultimately decided Murashov was worth the selection.
"We just felt that he was an extremely talented goaltender," Pryor said. "And we feel that we got some really good value where we got him the draft."
